Tuesday, June 4

At 4:00 I woke because my leg was itching. I bent it to rub my thigh with my calf and the wasp that was tickling me stung me hard. I leapt out of bed, grabbed a fly swatter, and spent ten minutes cornering and killing it.

I didn’t get much sleep after that. My leg was red, swollen and very painful.

At 9:00 the girls were in the fields, joined by Lilli, a girl from Borgå who will be working with them some weeks. I continued to paint the kitchen.

While I did I mused about wooden tools. I have been using a wooden ladder which we inherited when we took over the house, and it was too long to use comfortably in the spaces I needed to access. It took me until the afternoon to realise that it was a wooden ladder and I could saw a bit off. I did and made two ladders: one the size I needed and one small one that is useful for those places where I was I was one metre taller.

At 12:30 the girls came back for drinks and I also stopped. I decided to walk to the ferry to see the new ice cream kiosk. Ann-Sofi will be working there for most of the summer, and so I stop to talk with her. I am her only customer and she is bored. I buy an expensive Magnum Classic and walk back.

At 15:30 the girls will finish. Five minutes later I will also finish, having run out of surfaces to paint red.

Later I will go to Tirmo to get us lemonade and cider. The day is hotter than ever, and we will all be exhausted and wanting to sit still in the shade for thirty minutes relaxing with a cold drink.

I will discover that the shop is not yet ready for the summer. I will find just five Pizza Hawaii in the pizza section, for example: something the girls and I agree should only ever be eaten in the direst emergency. I will also notice a very few packets of grilling sausages and buy two for tomorrow, along with (one of the three packets of) mashed potato powder. Lemonade will, of necessity, be replaced by strawberry juice and some drink festooned with Moomin characters. Cder will turn into lonkero.

Later I will serve the rest of the tuna pasta salad for dinner, and then sit reading.

We will all go to bed by 22:00. Nobody will be bitten in the night.